Markus Jotzo
Nothing Can Touch Us!
Markus Jotzo
Nothing Can Touch Us!
Giving your team security when
nothing is secure anymore
© 2020 Markus Jotzo
Cover: Nicolaus Grunwaldt
Layout: Adina Cucicov
Editor: Anne Sophie Heinzer
Translator: Laura Davies
Publisher & Print: tredition GmbH,
Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany
ISBN
Hardcover 978-3-347-02481-6
e-Book 978-3-347-02482-3
All rights reserved
By the way, the tips in this book are drawn from my blogs and podcasts, which I publish every 14 days on my website. If you are interested in more of the same, you can subscribe to my German podcast “Führen wie ein Löwe” on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Each episode lasts 10 minutes, so they’re just right for your morning commute or when you need some inspiration during your lunch break.
This book is dedicated to all leaders who take their task seriously in always challenging their employees, leading them proactively, and being there for them.
Table of Contents
Preface
Dear leaders, dear curious readers!
Chapter 1: The Foundations – Hunt Like a Lion
1. Consistently Set Priorities – 3 Steps to Focused Strategy Time
2. Shaping Change through Your Leadership – 3 Challenges
Chapter 2: Meaningful Leadership – Meaning Generates Creative Strength
1. Giving Meaning and Setting New Values with Patience – 3 Basic Steps
2. Communication and Information Flow in Change Processes – 3 Essential Steps
3. Driving Charismatic and Visionary Changes – 7 Ingredients for Successful Communication
Chapter 3: No fear! Easing Employees’ Fears
1. Taking the Fear and Uncertainty out of Change – 3 Helpful Questions
2. The Fear of Mistakes and Other Big Challenges – 3 Unusual Implementation Tips
Chapter 4: Control is Good – Trust is Better
1. Letting Go of Control and Leading towards Self-Help – 3 Questions to Ask Yourself
Chapter 5: No Way Forward without Feedback
1. Developing Your Feedback Culture – 1 Measure that Rocks
2. More Understanding and Desire for Change – 3 Productive Questions
3. Openness and Trust – 6 Practical Tips
Chapter 6: What to Do in a Crisis?
1. Self-Management during a Crisis – 3 Steps for Clarity and Good Decision-Making
2. The Dilemma of a Crisis: The Lack of Recognition – 5 Tips to Give More Recognition
3. Telling Employees They’re Fired – A 6-Step Guide
4. Keeping Key Employees – 3 Decisive Questions
Chapter 7: Learning to Change the Easy Way
1. Preparing for Change – 6 Steps to the Next Level
2. Success in Change – 5 Behavior Tricks
3. Establishing New Habits – 2 Motivating Drivers
Preface
Dear leaders, dear curious readers1!
This is a practical book in which you will learn how to lead yourself and your employees with excellence.
You will find no lengthy passages discussing scientific studies. Instead, I offer practical tips that you as a leader can implement every single day.
All these leadership tips are highly relevant in these times, where change is happening with ever-increasing speed. Indeed, the greater the change, the more leadership is demanded of you in setting the course for your organization.
This book has emerged from my over 20 years of leadership experience at Unilever and in my own companies as well as 15 years in the training circuit. This has produced seven chapters, filled to the brim with tangible tips for everyday leadership.
I wish you the best of success in being a leader.
Yours,
Markus Jotzo.
Nature is awesome. It is perfect. It has adapted to changing circumstances over millions of years. The organisms that have made it this far have done so because they have spent many millennia fighting to adapt.
Let us look and learn from nature, for it contains principles that we can adopt, apply to our world of work, and thereby achieve success.
1 To enhance the readability in the following chapters only the male form of nouns and pronouns are used. At this point, I would like to highlight that I also mean women and people of other genders.
Chapter 1: The Foundations – Hunt Like a Lion
Imagine you are on safari. The burning sun sears your skin. You are patient, but also excited. From your hideout in the bush, you are observing a pride of lions. They have spent the past few hours dozing in the sun. Suddenly, a lioness rises and the whole pride awakens. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for: The pride has seen a herd of antelope wandering by in search of water. The hunt begins. While the lionesses spring into action, the pride leader continues to lie leisurely draped across his rock. You watch as the lionesses make themselves ready for the hunt, yet the lion seems to have completely different priorities…
1. Consistently Set Priorities – 3 Steps to Focused Strategy Time
Let us jump right in with a thought experiment: How can you get the contents of 3 bottles of orange juice – each holding 0.2 L – into 2 glasses at the same time when these also hold 0.2 L each?
Any good ideas?
What would your answer be?
By the way, drinking one of the bottles and then pouring the others two into the glasses doesn’t count because then the contents are not all in the glasses…
So, any ideas?
In one of my presentations, a managing director suggested, ‘I’d turn the juice into a concentrate.’ Good idea, right? He prioritized the essence of the juice, meaning that some of the H2O is lost. An engineer had the amazing idea of grinding out the inside of the glasses. Of course, while this would allow more to fit in each glass, it would not be able to accommodate the content of all three bottles.
Finally, an assistant said quite simply, ’Well, I guess I need someone with a third glass’ Exactly. Then everything will fit into the glasses – the three glasses.
Won’t work, won’t happen! – Are you sure?
The fact is: It won’t work. You cannot fit the contents of three bottle into two glasses at the same time. It’s the same in your job, every single day. And at home too, with your dog, your hobbies, and your family. You can only ever take care of your top priorities, never do everything at once.
So, what should you do?
Of course, you know the answer to this already: Prioritize! I call it consistently prioritizing. Meaning really taking the time to do the most important things. Now, you will already know that prioritizing is essential, but the problem for many leaders is this: They know this,